It was just a day after Rachel Campos-Duffy found out she didn’t get the job as co-host of “The View” in 2003 when she had an epiphany: She didn’t need the bright lights-big city hair-and-makeup scene. She was grateful for the life in small-town Wisconsin — Ashland — she had with her husband, Sean Duffy, and their small children.

Now, six years later, with five children and a husband running for Congress, Campos-Duffy has written a book she calls “a love letter to at-home moms.” In “Stay Home, Stay Happy: 10 Secrets to Loving At-Home Motherhood,” which comes out Tuesday, Campos-Duffy covers topics ranging from road trips with children, to the best 1980s workout music, to developing a support network.

Last week, one of the original reality TV stars — Campos-Duffy was on “Real World: San Francisco” when she was 22 — talked about her first book, her family, and how her first encounter with Sean Duffy (of “Real World: Boston”) became part of the footage in a “Real World/Road Rules Challenge” from the mid-1990s.

Here is Rachel Campos-Duffy on:

The Book / It’s a love letter to at-home moms; it is a book that isn’t about whether to be an at-home mother or not. It’s a book where if you’ve chosen to be an at-home mom or it chooses you — like happened to me — how to do it joyfully so you and your kids look back on the time with really warm memories.

At-Home Motherhood / People are focusing so much on the idea of at-home motherhood and whether it is good for kids or not. In my situation, it is good for my kids. I make no judgment about what works for other families. What’s not discussed, what’s not focused on, and what I think is the missing component of the whole at-home mom experience is the pleasure that it brings the woman herself.

I really like what I do. What’s interesting to me is that when I express that, whether through my blog or in my book, people kind of look at me like either I’m crazy or I’m a Stepford wife. It’s so hard for people to imagine that I love doing it. I think the reason they find it hard to believe that I love it is because it’s hard work. There are a lot of things out there that are hard work. Yet, as an at-home mom, when you say: “I love what I do,” people look at you like you’re wearing rose-colored glasses. You must not be telling us the full story.

Does That ‘Real World’ Tag Linger? / Here in Ashland, honestly, people don’t care — which is one of the things we really love about living here. When I travel in airports, I’ve been stopped. It’s funny to me, I could do anything in the world, I could write a book, I could be on “The View,” I could have a column — I can do anything in the world, and people are way more interested in what it was like to be on the “Real World.” It’s something I’ve embraced. It’s something in my life. Very few people have had that particular experience, although [the number of people] growing.

Meeting Sean Duffy / Right after he shot his show, I had just graduated from grad school in San Diego. They asked me to go to “Road Rules All-Stars.” They picked one person from each cast. We were each picked from our cast. … The first moment we ever met is captured. Isn’t that funny? They flew me to, like, Vermont and then the next day, had me get on a train and the cameras are there and everything. At every train stop until we got to New York, another cast member came in. And the last stop was in New York, and we all got off the train, and there at the train station, there was Sean, and it was captured on video.

Whether There Will Be More Duffys / We’re not opposed to the idea, but if I did, I’d like to say that would be the last. … I’m a real stickler about how bad programming is for kids these days. I’m a huge, huge fan of TiVo because I like to TiVo all the old shows I liked to watch as a kid that were totally clean.

My kids are all retro’d out. They watch “Beverly Hillbillies,” “I Dream of Jeannie” … they love “The Brady Bunch.” I worked with Florence Henderson on a show, and she might as well be Hannah Montana. Now they’re obsessed, they really want us to have a sixth [child] so we can be like the Brady Bunch.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in Things to Do

A touring production of the wildly successful, record-breaking Broadway musical “Hamilton” is coming to Minneapolis – eventually. The Hennepin Theatre Trust – which operates the State, Orpheum and Pantages theaters – announced Friday the musical would be part of its 2018-19 Broadway on Hennepin series, details of which won’t be fully revealed until early 2018. The best way to guarantee...

Classic rockers Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will celebrate 40 years in the business with a tour that hits St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center on June 3. Tickets are $149.50, $99.50, $79.50 and $49.50 and go through Ticketmaster. Joe Walsh, of the Eagles, opens. Petty, 66, stands as one of the most successful, enduring and well-liked rockers to emerge from...

A few years ago, I made good on a lifelong dream of making a backyard ice rink for my two hockey-obsessed sons. If you’re at all handy with tools, you can . Get on it soon, to sink the stakes for the wall into the ground before the soil is rock-hard. My permanent outlay for the thing included 7/16-inch-thick 8-by-4-foot boards, cut...

The River City Sculpture Tour, which this year brought a moose, giant dragonfly and chokecherry tree to downtown Stillwater, has been such a success that the organizer is planning to make it bigger and better in 2017. Artist and tour founder Julie Pangallo said Tuesday that she plans to expand the to downtown Bayport. “The tour has been phenomenally well-received,” Pangallo...

Some holiday traditions have nothing to do with the holidays. Take, for example, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s annual December habit of performing most (and sometimes all) of J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concertos, one of the consummate collections of large-scale chamber music or small-scale orchestral music.